🏀 KuBuckets Archive

KU got the Win. KU looked GOOD. There's a lot of room for improvement.

Izzo always gives us a good challenge and he certainly made it too close for comfort late. If either team makes Free Throws this is a different ball game.

Exhibitions are absolutely pointless to judge a team by. It was night and day difference from what we saw the last week.

KU is HUGE. KU is fast. KU has depth which is crazy to even think about. They have no idea how to defend yet. The Hi/Low is going to crush teams this year when executed properly. I was surprised how well we ran some stuff in the first half and was the key to the victory after the 2nd half letdown.
Some typical first game issues, turnovers, driving into defenders with no plan and a lack of awareness getting back in transition were the main weaknesses last night.

Q & Dotson: As good as advertised. Devon took a bit to settle down but he was terrific at times. Making 3's is game changer for him. His shot looked fine to me. Dotson really defends and his quickness allows him to stay with PG's on ball screens. Enjoy the 30+ games we get of Grimes. Smooth operator

Dedric: Gets 20 and 14 in a off-game. I thought he pressed some to snap out of the shooting slump but he impacts the game in a big way. His rebounding ability is 2nd to none on this team and he's the best passer as well. Can't wait to see his good games. Watch out world.

Azubuike: Noticeable improvement in the post. FT's looked good until he got in a pressure situation. As always his inability to stay on the floor is his biggest weakness. His impact on the floor last night was noticeable with Dedric having an off-game. What a difference two bigs makes to this team.

Vick: Not to overreact to one game with him but how does he fit on this team? His shot looked out of control. I was hoping to see the Sr improved Vick. I don't think we are close to seeing that yet with him. We'll need him as the season goes on.

Interested in thoughts on what everyone saw.

@BeddieKU23 I think Vick will improve once he and the coaches not only determine all that QG and DD can do, but also how they should be used with Vick. He is like an X-factor, and last night it seemed he wasn't as involved in playmaking except as an afterthought. Q and D looked comfortable together; now, they need to add the exponential growth with Vick.

Doke set the tone for the entire game in the first 5 minutes when he swatted Ward twice.

mayjay said:

@BeddieKU23 I think Vick will improve once he and the coaches not only determine all that QG and DD can do, but also how they should be used with Vick. He is like an X-factor, and last night it seemed he wasn't as involved in playmaking except as an afterthought. Q and D looked comfortable together; now, they need to add the exponential growth with Vick.

I hope he improves which is why I don't want to overreact to one game. He's an enigma

Dedric will struggle against long athletes.
I liked seeing Moore and Dotson in together albeit only a few minutes. We will need more than one guy on the floor who penetrates. Vick and Grimes dont really do it enough.

Dedric played 38 minutes in a big game. I imagine that will be a theme.

@BigBad Penetrators: Dotson, Moore and Garrett. Grimes I am not sure has the athleticism to do it on a regular basis, Vick isn't there mentally.

Dedric doesn't seem to have the explosive type of play. Above the rim ....

But he has basketball savvy in every cell in his body. Kid has great footwork and court awareness, positioning. He is gonna find himself in the right place at the right time much of the time. Just looks likes he's that guy. Should be a great watch

Yep. 14 rebounds, and how many other times did he impact a rebound, tipping it out to a teammate etc...

@BigBad @BShark

Grimes can slash. You look at his high school highlights and see that he can put the ball on the floor.

However, Grimes is also probably the best catch and shoot option on this team. That means he necessarily has to spend more time spotting up than slashing to the basket because he doesn't have as many viable kick out options. Grimes also has significant gravity, so his man cannot sink down to help on a drive, or he can punish them with his shooting.

If KU had another floor spacer on the roster (a Svi or Devonte, for example), Grimes could probably drive more. Dotson may provide some of that as the season goes, but I don't know that he will generate enough gravity before the end of the year.

Suffice it to say that Grimes will likely spend a lot of time spacing the floor, with most of his two point shots coming in transition, while many of his threes will come on kickouts and reversals within the regular offense.

Early on I was so impressed with Doke's improvement. It seemed his awareness, ability to pass when he didn't have anything and most importantly, his FT stroke looked like a different player. swishing 3 of 4 early. But then he clanked the rest, and important ones too at the end when things were close. He gave a great effort but was just looking gassed at the end and we know how being tired can really effect your shot. Also, some of his 4 fouls were junk calls, but still, he probably should not have been in there in the final minutes. Hope Huddy can keep improving his conditioning because he really looked good early on.

I didn't get a chance to see any pre-season games, so my early impressions watching the first 10 minutes of this game were dizzying trying to take in all the new stuff.

I know most weren't impressed here with Moore and his numbers weren't good - 11 mins, 3 fouls, 1 pt, 1 attempt, no buckets, no assists. Ok that's not good at all. But for some reason I still had a positive impression. No turnovers, some nice passes and he just looked relaxed early on, maybe not so much later. I think we'll see good things from him, hopefully this year, but probably next.

Unlike Moore, Dedric's stats (on an off night even) were impressive. Really excited about watching him blossom under Self for his year with us.

Unlike Dedric's off night, Grimes was definitely on - 30 mins, 7-14 FGs, 6-10 3s, 4 assists, 1 TO and a steal. Another blossom in Self's garden of abundance this year.

Mitch filled in well, as he did last year.

For all his minutes and new engagement level, Vick the senior did not impress.

KJ had some nice plays with his brother and I expect to see some more of that later this year, but not a bunch more. Next year though, he could be a stud.

Overall, great game and, once we gel, this team should be a juggernaut.

Another great year to be a jayhawk fan!

Dedric reminds me a bit of Collison's game. Very smart and in position all the time.

Best thing I saw all night was rebounding.
Second best thing I saw was confidence.

Worst thing I saw was taking the foot off the throat.

Kansas turned the ball over only 11 times yesterday, which was much better than the 20+ turnovers in each of their exhibition games. And probably at least like half of those turnovers were from trying to do too much in transition. The ball movement and shot selection in the half-court were very good. I really enjoyed the inside-out play that I saw last night.

Dedric Lawson still dominated the game when his shots weren't falling. 14 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks, 2 steals, and he got to the line 12 times. He still had 20 points, and if the rims were a little bit more friendly he could have easily had 30 points. I was really happy with the way Dedric played. He took good shots; I only thought that 1 or 2 were forced.

Doke had a bad shooting night by his standards (only 70% from the field), but he collected 17 points, 4 blocks, and 3 rebounds in 20 minutes. He also completely took Ward out of his game when he was on the floor (2-8, 9 points, 5 rebounds, 5 turnovers on the game). Free throws are still an issue but his stroke genuinely looks better. His late misses at the line were just a little long off the back of the rim, which is a much more comfortable miss for me. I thought Self should have taken him out of the game a little earlier at the end.

Q looked pretty confident in the game, didn't look passive. He had 21 points (18 of which were from 3). He also had 4 assists and played solid defense. I loved that he made 3's, but I'm not sure the 3's will be falling for him every night. My only complaint is that I would have liked to see Grimes drive and rebound a little more (he only had 1 rebound). But Dedric is a rebounding vortex so maybe that's a little unfair.

Dotson looked very comfortable with the ball in his hands, didn't really look like a freshman (other than transition). He made good passes, took good shots and made them, and was comfortable with the ball in his hands when the game got close at the end. I think that's a big thing. Some guys look like deer-in-the-headlights in those kind of situations, but Devon looked like he wanted the ball. I'm so happy we have him.

Vick needs to play better.

Liked Garrett mostly but he picked up 4 fouls in 14 minutes. I don't know if that was because there was a quick whistle yesterday or if he needs to do a better job of defending without fouling. I do know that the team as a whole needs to play better transition defense, though.

Moore didn't get a lot of playing-time but I still think he's valuable as a scorer off the bench. I'm sure there will be a few games this season that KU wins because of Charlie's 3-point shooting and scoring. He'll be fine.

Lightfoot and Dave were both fine in small minutes.

When you consider that Vick was 1-7 from the floor, Dedric was 5-18 from the floor, and Michigan St shot 12-23 from 3 and went to the line 35 times, but KU that still won, I think it's encouraging going forward.

Grimes shot around 40% from 3 last year in HS and through all the extra's he played in. Vitale labeling him as streaky really wasn't the smartest of words to use. He's a scorer. He will score and struggle at times, all players do, nobody is perfect every game and very few are not streaky. Mechanically his shot looks good and as long as he gets his feet set he'll make a good amount of shots for this team. A few of his misses looked good, a few of his misses he wasn't set and was off. I was happy he was aggressive looking for his shot. We haven't even seen his midrange or his ability to get to the hoop and make floaters and those 6-8 footers. He's got it all in his arsenal

I called out Dok in the preseason for looking like he’d regressed a bit.
I was wrong, but I think I know why I was wrong: Dok needs a team around him to feed him the ball and space the floor, which wasn’t happening in the preseason without any set plays or Self wanting to show too much.

Agree that Dedric just knows how to score, where to be on the floor, like Danny Manning did.

Still love Dotson. some concern that he’s the only guy penetrating.

Grimes was hot from 3. Would like to see other aspects of his game. Got totally hosed on that mystery foul under the basket that sent MSU on that run late in the game.

Garrett. Hmmm. Confidence in him was once brimming, now not so much.

BeddieKU23 said:

Grimes shot around 40% from 3 last year in HS and through all the extra's he played in. Vitale labeling him as streaky really wasn't the smartest of words to use. He's a scorer. He will score and struggle at times, all players do, nobody is perfect every game and very few are not streaky. Mechanically his shot looks good and as long as he gets his feet set he'll make a good amount of shots for this team. A few of his misses looked good, a few of his misses he wasn't set and was off. I was happy he was aggressive looking for his shot. We haven't even seen his midrange or his ability to get to the hoop and make floaters and those 6-8 footers. He's got it all in his arsenal

Good point.

Clay Thompson is streaky.

If Q is streaky like that, I'll take it.

I'm far more concerned with giving up 87 than how we can improve upon scoring 92 against an Izzo coached MSU team... We will score and won't have much trouble doing it.

Not being able to defend the 3 (especially from the bigs) was what let us down last season. So far, game 1, 5 threes given up to a post player. We have to get better at this. I was also concerned with how well MSU was able to run in transition on us. If you can force a couple more misses from 3 and not allow layups in transition, we probably win this game by 15. I expect a lot more out of this defense than what was shown last night.

@Kcmatt7 I think the tight whistle hurt this team defensively. KU started the game rather well on defense I thought. MSU is extremely well coached too, and their players have good chemistry. I think Self can get this team to be an elite defense eventually.

The Nova game will be very interesting...

@justanotherfan so a 6'5 210lb spot up shooter? Man what a waste!

BigBad said:

@justanotherfan so a 6'5 210lb spot up shooter? Man what a waste!

His point was really fair though, if you don't have anyone else to really take that role, then that's what you need him to do a lot.

BigBad said:

@justanotherfan so a 6'5 210lb spot up shooter? Man what a waste!

I don't disagree, but the fact is that Grimes is the only player on the roster with that specific skillset.

We have other guys that can slash. We don't have a spot up shooter on the roster. There's no Brannen Greene or Andrew White. If there were, they would play 20 mpg for this team because of the floor spacing they would provide.

Moore is a very good shooter, but his size makes it tough for him to be a spot up shooter. Grimes has to stretch the floor because no one else really can on a consistent basis. Maybe Vick steps into that role a bit more, but even then, it's Grimes and Vick in that role, and that's it.

I sure liked Dok's up and under move during the first half. Clearly, Dok is working on his inside game. On defense, what's it going to take for Dok to stop trying to block every shot? Coach Flop says "Dok, you're 7 feet tall; just go straight up and make them score over you, then turn for the rebound. That's all you have to do. When you go up and swing your wrist to try to block every shot, you're never in position to rebound the miss." Coach Self predicted that Dok will shoot 65% from the line. I think he may be right.

@justanotherfan I'd hoped that Vick was going to take over Svi's role as the spot shooter for us this year. I still think he can. I sure liked the 3s by freshmen Dotson and Grimes. I'm very impressed.

@stoptheflop

Vick is a streaky shooter as opposed to a pure shooter. Vick can definitely hit 4 or 5 in a game, but he also may go 0-7. He can go through long hot or cold stretches. That makes it tough to rely on him as a floor spacer because he can go cold for a while.

That has nothing to do with his concentration. He just isn't a pure shooter like Svi. Pure shooters (the Reggie Miller's, Ray Allen's of the world) don't really go hot and cold. They can get hot, but they don't really go cold and missed tons of shots in a row.

Streak shooters run hot and cold. These are guys like JR Smith. They can really get going and hit a bunch of shots in a row, but they can also struggle and go on a long slump.

Svi is one of the former. Vick is one of the later. In high school I had a teammate that was a pure shooter. He could get hot, but he was consistent. I was more of a streak shooter. I could get going and knock in a few in a row, but wasn't going to knock down shots like that every single night.

Who is this JR Smith? 😆 Billy Thomas was the streakiest shooter I can think of!

justanotherfan said:

@stoptheflop

Vick is a streaky shooter as opposed to a pure shooter. Vick can definitely hit 4 or 5 in a game, but he also may go 0-7. He can go through long hot or cold stretches. That makes it tough to rely on him as a floor spacer because he can go cold for a while.

That has nothing to do with his concentration. He just isn't a pure shooter like Svi. Pure shooters (the Reggie Miller's, Ray Allen's of the world) don't really go hot and cold. They can get hot, but they don't really go cold and missed tons of shots in a row.

Streak shooters run hot and cold. These are guys like JR Smith. They can really get going and hit a bunch of shots in a row, but they can also struggle and go on a long slump.

Svi is one of the former. Vick is one of the later. In high school I had a teammate that was a pure shooter. He could get hot, but he was consistent. I was more of a streak shooter. I could get going and knock in a few in a row, but wasn't going to knock down shots like that every single night.

Maybe Vick read your comment and got some motivation from it.

VICK READS BUCKETS!

@BShark Actually that looked a lot like the Vick we saw the first semester last year. I think he was high point man thru December.

Really liked Garrett's dribble drive at 7:47 1st half, creates his own shot, misses, but gets his own rebound and resets.